If the amount of particles in the air had decreased by as little as one microgram per cubic meter, 250 people's lives could have been saved - only in Manhattan.  

American researchers surveyed 3080 areas in the United States and it was found that people who have long lived in areas with high levels of PM 2.5 are at 15 percent more likely to die of covid-19 than people living in areas with lower levels.

Pollution from cars and power plants

It is small pollutants in a size called PM 2.5 that cause the great damage when we get them into our bodies through breathing. The pollutants are less than a human hair and come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, for example in cars and power plants. 

"Based on the knowledge we have about the negative health effects of air pollution, it would be remarkable if they do not contribute to the worse consequences of this corona virus," says Bertil Forsberg, professor of environmental medicine at Umeå University.

The worst affected areas most polluted

Another study published this week shows that 78 percent of all deaths in Italy, France, Spain and Germany occurred in the areas most polluted.  

But these types of studies are not epidemiological, that is, they only look at the relationship between places with high levels of air pollution and high death rates, according to Bertil Forsberg. 

- It's a very small study. Therefore, more research is needed on the impact of environmental pollution on the pandemic right now, says Yaron Ogen, the study's author, to SVT. 

Air pollution has decreased in several places as a result of curfew and quarantine, which SVT previously reported. The short-term effects of these reductions mainly benefit people who already have underlying lung or heart problems. 

More about the effects of air pollution on our health in the Science World program "The poison in the air".

A link to the Harvard study is here.

A link to the study from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg can be found here.